Voice recognition: Speak and it shall be written. Speech Systems Inc and Timeworks will unveil their speech recognition system for Windows this week at the Comdex/Windows World exhibition in Atlanta, Georgia.
With these systems, you talk into a microphone and the words appear in text on the screen. Be warned: they are in their infancy, which means plenty of glitches and farnarkling. Just as clippers beat the first motor-mowers and horses beat the first cars, I’d back a good typist against the first voice-recognition programs, but eventually the voice recognition technology will threaten the key-boarders’ job.
IBM already has a voice-recognition system on the market. It runs on OS/2 (because IBM hates Windows). But IBM will be forced to make a Windows version before long because the market will demand it. I saw it work at PC94 in Sydney recently. With all these systems you have to train the computer by reading a set text for a couple of hours. It then learns as you correct mistakes.
The IBM version ran at 70 words a minute, but by the time you cut and paste it into a word-processor and fix up the errors, you would be hard pushed to beat a 30- or 40-word-a-minute rough key-as-you-think writer. You would beat a 100-word-a-minute shorthand plus 90-word-a-minute keyboarder translating voice to text the old way.
But there is no change out of $10,000 for computer and software. If you just want software and a hardware upgrade from a 486-4MB to make it run, there is little change out of $3500.
Speech Systems calls its system PE500 and Timeworks calls its Say It. Neither is yet priced, but they talk of “”unheard-of affordability”. But clearly the competition on voice recognition is here and prices will fall and the product will improve. Goodbye, steno-secs.
Corel: CorelDraw 5 will be launched in Australia on June 16. Make many megabytes on your hard disk free. Corel is the graphics program with the mostest (in features and price). CorelDraw is for serious commercial graphic artists and has more features for crating freehand drawings, manipulating photos, mixing, blending and generally behaving like Rembrandt and Jackson Pollock on the computer screen than any other graphics program. Beware: it is not easy to use, it takes enormous chunks of disk space and costs a fortune.
Project: Microsoft Project Version 4.0 should be in Australia soon. The software is used for construction projects, conventions, managing maintenance schedules of property or machinery and the like.
Apple: Apple continues its push into the schools. It is offering school site licences (which includes a freebee for the teacher at home) at $695 for each of seven programs: System 7.1; Hypercard 2.2; At Ease for Workgroups; Apple Font Pack; MacIntosh PC Exchange; PhotoFlash and Apple Personal Diagnostics. The freebee for the teachers means they will not be working on earlier versions (or pirate versions) at home.
Speaking of Apple, Conversions Plus for Windows Version 2.5 is available at $US150 from the US. Phone 0011,1,203,2680030. You can read Apple formatted disks in your PC. The program will also translate Apple files into comparable PC applications and do conversions between various versions and types of PC files (database, spreadsheet, word processing and graphics). In Australia you can get MacDisk ($149) which will also enable a PC to read an Apple disk but will not do the application translations.
Lotus: Lotus 1-2-3 has announced an upgrade of its DOS version of its spreadsheet program. While most program developers are concentrating on Windows, WordPerfect and now Lotus are looking after non-Windows users. There are benefits. Windows applications may be easy to use first time, but if you are familiar with a program you can trade off some ease of use with some speed. Programs running direct from DOS tend to work faster than Windows. (Interesting experiment: put an ancient DOS version of Word 4 or Word 5 on a 486 with 8MB of RAM; the commands are done before the finger leaves the key.)
Lotus has used more graphics, icons and mouse use in its DOS version and has made mailing easier. However, without Windows, there is no cutting and pasting to other applications. So, the DOS version is really for people whose main or only use of the computer is for spreadsheets and for people who want very large spreadsheets to run faster. The cost is $735, a bit on the high side given the cost of Windows spreadsheet programs.
Aldus: Aldus Pagemaker 5.0 and Freehand 4.0 for the Power Macintosh will be available in June. The main benefit for users will be speed rather than extra functions. These versions have been written to take advantage of the Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC)-based PowerPC processor upon which the Power Mac is based. At PC94 when the Power Mac was shown to the masses, many users complained it was not as fast as it was cracked up to be. This was because not much available software had been specifically written for it. These packages should be a good test for the PowerPC because they have to move graphics around. Graphics users will thus get their first proper test drive of the PowerPC in June. (Upgrades to 02 444477. Other inquiries to Aldus 02 4188488).
Reams of it: Siemens Nixdorf is boasting the “”fastest DP printer in the world”. It does 340 A4 pages a minute, or seven million pages a month and will run through the night without misfeeds. So much for the paperless office.